


moult no feather

by billspilledquill



Category: Hamlet - All Media Types, Hamlet - Shakespeare
Genre: Alternative Universe - Hamlet Lives, As you would expect from a Hamlet fic, Knifeplay, M/M, Mild dubcon because none of them know what they are doing, Period-Typical Sexism, Sad Blowjobs, Self-Harm, mentions of - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-09
Updated: 2018-12-09
Packaged: 2019-09-14 23:28:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,233
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16922430
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/billspilledquill/pseuds/billspilledquill
Summary: More often that not, Horatio wondered what made his prince kneel so keenly on the ground, with his eyes big and black as the clouds that have bestowed on Denmark so long ago.





	moult no feather

**Author's Note:**

> Dedicated to the lovely DidiNyx, because I appreciate them with all my heart. I would gift it to them, but given the subject matter, perhaps it is better to leave it at dedication.

 

He healed, eventually.

Before bearing him high up the stakes like a soldier, Fortinbras wanted to make sure he was dead. To please the last heir of the royal family’s blood, he claimed. Some lasting breath was unfortunately noticed there, unmistakably ghosting through his body. So they took him to the nearest medics, and healed. Much to his displeasure, Horatio would like to think.

(Hamlet wasn’t, after all, _suppose_ to live.)

“He wants to see you very much,” the King said. Horatio didn’t ask how they could be sure of that. “I will bring him to your room tonight. One hour. I would love to see him more... peacefully settled in our palace.”

He hesitated. “Did he really want to see me?”

Fortinbras laughed. “Love is blind. He will see you through.”

“You needn’t speak in verses, my lord.”

“And thou,” the King mouthed quietly, “spake in jest. I do not condone any loyalty from you,” he continued hastily. “I need prince Hamlet to feel as secure as possible, don’t push him too far, be it in love or in war.”

Horatio blinked. He was going to reply that no one had ever push Hamlet anywhere that his conscience didn't struggle for, but the King disappeared, the feeling of him light and inexistent, like fleeting ghosts, like weeping shy girls from the ponds, with flowers in their hair and water beneath their feet.

(Love and war had one edge; Hamlet standing above the fogged precipice, waiting for the eventual downfall. All Horatio has to do was to pull, or to stay.)

 

* * *

 

More often that not, Horatio wondered what made his prince kneel so keenly on the ground, with his eyes big and black as the clouds that have bestowed on Denmark so long ago. It was as if his prince’s unruly nature altered the world, for better or for worse.

(It’s always worse, his mind supplied. Worsening like corpses and smelling like rot.)

The meetings then turned from one to two hundred. Until Horatio couldn’t remember the days that didn’t start with a greeting from the King’s butler with a breakfast tray to Hamlet’s eyes boring in his late at night, shaken with nightmares about distant pasts and possible glory.

Today Denmark shone a friendly light on his lord. The moon smothered the very edges of his face; sitting on the wooden, carefully crafted table, Hamlet is playing with his pocket knife, trying out some new edges in his already sharp angles. ( _Who let him?_ ) It didn’t exactly cut his skin, Hamlet protested when he tried to take it away; a game is a game and he ought to respect it. And Hamlet, if nothing else, was bad at games that he himself set the rules. Always too dangerously careless, always too prejudiced in favor of the opposition.

(Your skin is too soft, Hamlet said. _Look here, my good sir, mine’s as hard as steel_ , and he cut them open. In the moonlight, it almost looked like the blush of a maiden.)

Horatio had heard it before, stories about the deceased King, how he had bedded his brother’s lawful wife three months after the former’s funeral, had seen it in his lord’s eyes when he came to him kneeling after late in the night. He had been there, too, when the King had resisted the poison cup, gagging as Hamlet drowned him in red blooded wine.

(Sometimes, he thought, Hamlet took him in his mouth the same way the King had accepted the cup: with a tragic finality, heavy on his tongue.)

Hamlet finally set down his knife, his fingers hovering over the tip of it. He was thinking about everything again; something that moonlight didn’t show. The cuts, the blood, not even the healed ones.

“My lord,” Horatio staggered. Hamlet steadied him with his laugh.

“What a name!” He exclaimed. “I would let you swear to never call me that; but now it only seemed like a cruel joke. I might have lost all my mirth and will, good man, but I can never refuse jest from a cruel mouth.” Hamlet’s cheeks glowered in shame or in anger, his eyes bright. “Now, now, a hundred pound for my kingdom! My fair kingdom with me as the only subject— nay, my sweet prince, I am the King of infinite space, the lord of foreign planet— Denmark had been taken by a whore, and I do not wish to have her.”

Hamlet’s long limbs entangled as he tried to move. He stumbled a little when he reached the floor. “Now, come, my good friend,” he said. “Come kiss me like mine uncle kissed my father’s ears.”

( _Do you wish for death?_ Horatio wanted to ask, but his prince’s lips were soft and willing and so indescribably alive that he could not wish for more. He pressed on, and Hamlet moaned. That was the most sweet deception for living Horatio had ever seen and was wholly devoted to. No lies had ever been wanted like this.)

Before Horatio can touch him properly, his lord kneeled before him swiftly and without ceremony. Disappointment coils deep inside him, Hamlet had never let him touch him properly; and so he would never dare to. He let him open his trousers with compliance, and submitted himself to his will.

The cold air felt like exposure, but never intimate in dignity. This could be one of the street whores, or one of the Wittenberg students too lonely to find anything else to do. Even with Hamlet kneeling in front him without resistance, there was a line there they both never wished to cross. All of this play and game was about Hamlet’s eyes; big and black. It was the season of cloudscapes.

Hamlet’s hands were covered in hidden cuts. When he cupped his prick, he felt like he was too: burnt and cut by those delicate hands; bruised beyond relief. He moved, almost a caress, as if he wanted to worship without hidden motives, and Horatio shuddered in response.

(Hamlet grinned, wide and giddy, like devil claiming his soul.)

“Father would never have let me; dear mother would be horrified that I am following her virtues,” Hamlet mused. “A shame that they are all dead now.”

And before Horatio say anything— words of comfort, words of hurries, words of pleads— Hamlet opened his mouth and took him to the roots.  
  
(Hamlet didn’t move, as he always did in the first moments. Horatio would usually feel cold in these empty gaps between skin against skin, as he watched Hamlet weep with hollowed cheeks.)

This time, no tears surged; his prince took his hands and placed it on his wild hair, ordering him silently to grasp those curls and pull. Horatio would never deny him anything. Hamlet breathed with he did pull, however, and closed his eyes in satisfaction.

He pulled out, a slide of saliva and fluid. Hamlet, with his swollen red lips, kissed the crown of his head. Horatio remembered the knife, there, on the table, wondered if Hamlet would be just as happy as having that knife down in his throat, with blood flowing down, chocking himself with something else than his damning thoughts.

“Am I a whore, Horatio?” Hamlet rasped out. He never talked during these kind of things. “Would you be pleased if I spread my legs wantonly and call you in the streets?”

He trailed kisses down his length, “Will you, my good friend?”

Horatio sighed. The warmth engulfed him once more. “Will you be happy if I say yes?”

(The bobbing of his head made Horatio almost afraid at the prospect of Hamlet ever talking again. But he seemed happy for shutting up right now, with flush high on his cheeks and tongue swirling around and around.)

There was something aggressive in everything Hamlet did; a volatile, irreversible flight towards the sun. Aggressive and terrible, and quietly disheartening. Fortinbras wanting to avenge his father; Hamlet wanting to die for his. The same, except Hamlet seemed very interested to try to suck his sorrow away, licking it down, fire to fire.

“Please,” Horatio said. “You need to stop before—” They had an agreement, but Hamlet, being Hamlet, was never one about promise.

With a shout, he spilled in his mouth. Hamlet swallowed it all, and along with it, the line they had never dared to cross. Horatio muttered a prayer by habit.

His prince wobbled as he stood up. Tired, he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. His breath the only sound in the room. He grabbed the knife and clutched at the hilt. Horatio was busy arranging his trousers when blood trickled on Hamlet’s palm. For god’s sake.

“For the prosperity of Denmark-darling and my mother-aunt,” Hamlet said.

“You loved them,” Horatio breathed out, not daring to embrace him. Hamlet gritted his teeth, his eyes ablaze.

“They didn’t deserve my love, as I didn’t deserve theirs. They ought to be a man, or be more than man! Horatio, Horatio. None of us are deserving.”

Defying his gaze for the first time, Horatio found himself at the eye of the storm. “ _What_ do you deserve, then?”

(It was clear, at that moment, with Hamlet’s swollen mouth and cuts all over his body, what he thought he deserved. A question, if not an option: blood, pain, kneeling, or death?)

Hamlet shook his head, his mouth tightened in a line. With a grunt, he clasped his forehead as if he wished to make himself smaller. The blood on his head made him look like a bruised martyr; a fallen knight, perhaps; seeking death for something greater.

“A sin! A sin! I do confess,” Hamlet said. “I’m disgusted with what I want.”

“I did not know—“

“Ah, I could have told you, but I would have to kill you after.”

Horatio didn’t need to ponder if he was being serious or not. “Life is not theatre, my lord.”

Hamlet stared at him, wide eyed. His hands fumbling with the knife made a halt. “Haven’t you seen your roof, Horatio? Why, life is exactly the kind of stage I would be in. That brave overhanging firmament— I wanted it, my friend. It was never out of my reach. I just need you—“

“What?”

Hamlet choked a little, his dark skin with spots of white under his lips, “I just want you to stay, Horatio. I am not a greedy person.”

“For heaven’s sake!” Horatio threw his arms in the air, and in an enchanted, brief second of losing his grip on reality, he shouted, “You want! What do you want! Everything in the flames. Nothing in your head. You want hell.”

“One cannot want what we already have, good Horatio,” Hamlet answered with a rather dramatic fancy. “I simply hate tragedies that don’t end. It’s just so insipid. It’s boring. It’s tiring. I wish you could fuck me dead.”

“But it ended— it did end,” he shuttered. He almost backed a step when his prince came closer. “Please.”

“ _Please?_ I don’t like begging, Horatio. Make me understand. Go on.” He rose his head, defiant. “Hit me. Kill me. My friend, it’s been so long since people have tried to convince me of anything.”

“Please, let it not come to that—“

“Go on,” he rose Horatio’s hand gently to his cheek. “My hearts of hearts.”

Horatio, after all, could never deny his lord anything.

The hit came sudden yet expected. Hamlet barked a laugh that sounded like relief, the blood sliding down his red cheek. He kneeled again, keeping himself religiously still. The cold edges reappeared, his eyes glistening. He draped himself on Horatio’s legs, then opened his arms, setting himself comfortably on the floor. He curled into himself, then stilled all at once.

(The earth shook in waves underneath Horatio; the sobs seemed to come from afar, a place where heaven and earth cannot be reached. It somehow always end like this. Their encounter must end like this, Horatio thought bitterly. The clouds were too tight and too dark to be ignored.)

A knock was heard. The King’s men. They were there to take Hamlet away.

“Don’t be afraid,” Hamlet reassured him, shaking from head to toe. “I have always come back to you.”

He dared, as this night seemed to be the one to break everything between them. “Never with the same piece of you, my lord.”

Some voices were heard outside. About princes and executions. About the visitings of whores and the slick of her legs. To take him away was to to save Denmark, they have written on some paper of great importance. For once, Horatio couldn’t disagree with that.

“God,” Horatio said, not knowing if this was a cry or a prayer. “What have we done?”

(At the soft clicking of the door, he heard Hamlet murmuring something about hell. We’ll meet there, Horatio thought, where sufferings were equal under lawfulness and anarchy.)

He looked upon his hand, red with someone else’s blood. “A stage—“ he trailed.

And the moon stopped shining through. The curtains shut. The feeling of his hand burning.

(He can hear applause, fading as the whole world went back to the dark, brooding clouds; as beautiful and as black as his eyes.)

Horatio did not stay or pull. The precipice empty; below, two corpses. Children of Elsinore that didn’t last the night, be it in love or in war.

 

**Author's Note:**

> I have, unfortunately, a whole background story with why Fortinbras choose to keep Hamlet alive and other weird, fucked-up Hamlet logic. Just be glad I didn’t wrote a 30k fic about sad sex and sad people, because that was my original plan.


End file.
